The Anders Loves Maria poll

February 8, 2010 at 12:20 pm | In webcomics | 3 Comments

I thought I’d try out this poll feature on the site. Should this be a success, I may try out other polls in the future.

Rene Engstrom’s Anders Loves Maria just ended. What did you think?

The Webcomic Overlook #107: The Dreamland Chronicles

February 8, 2010 at 8:17 pm | In 4 Stars, CG webcomic, The Webcomic Overlook, WCO Big Review, action webcomic, adventure webcomic, all ages webcomic, fantasy webcomic, webcomics | 5 Comments
Tags:

3D CG Art webcomics. Brrrrrrr!!!!

The very term sends shivers down the spines of right-thinking webcomic readers and reviewers alike. In the past, I’ve mocked pixel art and stick figure comics as the aesthetic nadir of webcomics. However, no one practicing these two “art forms” ever tries to convince the readers that the artwork is actually good, and the good webcomics compensate fairly well with writing. I don’t know if you can ever make the same excuse for CG art, because in this case the art itself will always be front and center. So I’m not exagerrating when I say that 3D CG Art webcomics, hands down, are the worst looking webcomics EVER.

It’s counterintuitive, because 3D animation does pretty well with respect to movies. It’s gotten so mainstream that we can ignore the technical nuts and bolts and focus on the content… like how both Up and Avatar are both nominated for the Academy Awards for Best Motion Picture and not just for the technical categories. Unfortunately, your average webcomic creator doesn’t have access to James Cameron money, and, as a result, the stuff coming out of their cheap-o 3D programs is the epitome of terrible.

When you think 3D CG art webcomics, you think dead, unemotional faces. Eyes not fully lodged in their sockets. Stiff marionette poses. Plastic skin textures. On one hand, you have waifish and impossibly smooth 3D Poser lookalikes with slightly different hairstyles. On the other hand, you have the “artists” who put so little effort in their work that they’re basically just captioned screenshots from Sims 3 and Team Fortress 2.

Fellow webcomic reviewer Ping Teo at Webcomic Finds did a better job at distilling the pitfalls of 3D CG art on her blog when reviewing Sunset Grill:

Given that you work with 3D stuff, I’m guessing you should already be familiar with the Uncanny Valley Syndrome…. I think this is the biggest obstacle you are going to have to overcome. People are weird with regards to this thing. The more realistic the art looks, the less they tend to like it. Especially if it’s 3D. I experienced a little bit of this when I started reading your comic, it took a couple of chapters before I could stop feeling uncomfortable about it.

So why am I so keen on reviewing Scott Christian Sava’s The Dreamland Chronicles, a webcomic full of 3D artwork? Chalk it up to an ineffable curiosity and an unshakable faith that any medium can be tamed by a good storyteller. Can the worst artform in webcomics be redeemed by a skillful artist? Or can an artform be so bad that all it can deliver is migraines? Will The Dreamland Chronicles forever be doomed to wander the Uncanny Valley as well?


Continue reading The Webcomic Overlook #107: The Dreamland Chronicles…

Metapost: so lazy

February 5, 2010 at 9:13 am | In The Webcomic Overlook, metapost, webcomics | 1 Comment
Tags: ,

Apologies for no new reviews this week. I’ve been busy wasting time, what with Lost premiering this week, me lurking on Lost communities, me inputting crackpot Lost theories on my wife’s Facebook, and generally being Lost. (Seriously, this is an issue. I think the same thing happened early last year when my wife and I plowed through the first four seasons on DVD in preparation for Season 5.)

(In related news, Joel of HijiNKS Ensue may need to detonate a nuclear warhead to put his mind at peace.)

(EDIT: And while we’re on the subject of Lost, Nedroid’s Spoiler-Free Lost Spoilers.)

Also, the Superbowl. So my mind’s been in several places at once. I will let you get a peek into my next three planned reviews, though, if you’d like to play along this February:

Also, once upon a time, El Santo was once in a collaborative storytelling circle, where you post three or four paragraphs and then another writer takes over. It went through a pretty good run until we got bogged down by our own mythology. (Though, now that I look back at it, it was not nearly as confusing as Lost.)

Well, the folks over at Witch’s Brew are trying the same thing, but with webcomics. I checked out a few panels, and frankly it’s badly drawn/copy-pasted and makes no goddamn sense… but it does look like everyone involved is having a lot of fun. And what more could you ask for? The Webcomic Overlook sorta hopes that this kind of thing catches on as a sort of fun past time.

Lost tonight! WWWAAAAAALLLLLLLTTTTT!!!!

February 2, 2010 at 1:00 am | In The Webcomic Overlook, webcomics | 1 Comment
Tags: , ,


Above image from the webcomic After Lost.

The final season of Lost begins tonight! The Webcomic Overlook is a big fan of Lost, so expect him to be in a completely catatonic state tomorrow.

Also, if you’re up for some Lost-style music, check out music from the Webcomic Overlook’s favorite Lost-themed band, Sonic Weapon Fence. (Believe it or not, The Webcomic Overlook is actually aware of three existing Lost-themed bands.) Check out this sample track about The Others called “Mixed Signals.”

Webcomic creators say “Meh” to the iPad

January 30, 2010 at 7:13 pm | In The Webcomic Overlook, webcomics | 2 Comments

So what’s the word on the street on the new iPad? What, didn’t you read the title to this blog post?

Kate Beaton, Jeffrey Rowland, Randall Munroe, Ryan North, and Chris Onstad give their initial impressions on this interview at Comics Alliance.

The much ballyhooed announcement of the Apple tablet finally arrived this Wednesday, along with the slightly unfortunate name “iPad” and details on what will essentially be a giant iPhone, but with no phone. There’s been a lot of speculation about what this will mean for the digital distribution of comics, much of which was rounded up at CBR and later at Newsarama, while Rich Johnston trumpeted iPads as our “new overlords” and Comixology almost immediately envisioned their own iPad app.

But if the iPad is going to revolutionize the way we read comics — and that’s still an “if” — what will it mean for webcomics, which have been native in the digital world since day one? We asked some of the biggest creators in webcomics for their thoughts.

Randall Munroe, the creator of “xkcd,” replied that “while it’s a nice device — I’ve been frustrated by the lack of ultraportable computers which aren’t just underpowered netbooks — I don’t think it will have any more impact on webcomics than the iPhone did.”

So… yeah. They say, “Meh.”

Joy of Webcomics 2010

January 29, 2010 at 2:22 pm | In The Webcomic Overlook, webcomics | 1 Comment

Wrapping up Friday with some tidbits from around the World Wide Web:

  • I’d heard of Axe Cop, the webcomic based on a 5-year-old’s stories, but I hadn’t realized that it was part of an interesting phenomenon where the comic was passed, word of mouth through Twitter. The synopsis provided by Robot 6 sounds fascinating:

    One look at its genuinely childlike imagination, action and sense of humor — my favorite bit is when a guitar-wielding supervillain called Bad Santa is defeated when another character gains his powers and becomes Good Bad Santa — seems to have been all it took for the twitterati to get hooked, no doubt recalling all their own afternoons spent making up stories and playing hero in backyards and basements. Indeed, the site has been fairly groaning under the collective interest of the Internet; it was completely down last night, and the strip’s image loading has slowed to a crawl as of this writing.

  • In some more Robot 6 news (and boy are they full of webcomic news today), a new charcoal-drawn webcomics comes to life courtesy of Mark Siegel, the editorial director of First Second Books. It’s called Sailor Twain, or the Mermaid in the Hudson.

    “It is 1887,” Siegel told Publishers Weekly, “and the depths of the Hudson River hold the unfathomable secrets of two men: the owner of a steamboat, who throws a bottled message overboard each morning, and the boat’s captain, who saves a wounded mermaid. Into this comes a famous writer whose love for one of them will keep both men from taking their secrets to a watery grave.”

  • Something’s bugging Fizz over at The Cranky Old Gnome. And it’s webcomic fans who are too critical, and webcomic fans who can’t stand criticism. And its sounds like something I might say:

    The ‘hyper-critics’ spent all their time criticizing every aspect of the comic, from it’s art and writing, to the author’s broken promises and lack of commitment. Nothing the author did was good enough for them. Most of the time they complained about the lack of updates, but then even when there were new comics, they called the art hackneyed and the writing trite.

    The ’super-fanboys’ on the other hand blindly defended everything the artist did no matter what. The artist was above reproach. No-one had a right to complain that the comic never got updated because it was free content. Nobody could call the art or writing bad because they aren’t artists–they can’t create anything so they don’t know how hard it is.

    To be honest both sides ended up sounding foolish and childish. All their arguments, even the most intelligent ones, eventually devolved into bitter name calling.

    Anyway, Fizz makes a plea that while it’s wrong to be negative all the time, it’s equally wrong to think art is above criticism, even if it is free.

  • The Washington Post is trying to figure out: what’s the best webcomic of the decade? I thought this was going to be a shoe-in for xkcd (again), but surprisingly it’s a dead heat between Penny Arcade and Perry Bible Fellowship. My own list (where Gunnerkrigg Court tops all) can be found here.

The Webcomic Overlook #106: Raine Dog

January 29, 2010 at 9:42 am | In 1 Star, The Webcomic Overlook, WCO Big Review, dramatic webcomic, furry webcomic, slice-of-life webcomic, webcomics | 21 Comments
Tags:

D. C. Simpson is probably one of the most successful webcomic creators today. Her first published comic strip, Ozy & Millie, won an impressive number of awards: the 1999 College Media Advisers Award for Best Strip Cartoon, the Ursa Major Award in 2002, 2006, and 2007, and the Web Cartoonists’ Choice Awards in 2002. (Remember those?) She also struck gold last year when her comic strip, Girl, won Amazon.com’s Comic Strip Superstar contest and was awarded a publishing contract from Andrews McMeel Universal.

So I don’t doubt that D. C. Simpson has talent. But, then again, so did the people behind Dreamcatcher, which was a terrible movie but had a two-time Oscar winner writing the screenplay and Morgan Freeman on screen. Talented people make bad mistakes. And sometimes the worst missteps happen on the most personal, autobiographical projects.

In D. C. Simpson’s case, it’s Raine Dog, the comic she hosts on Keenspot. It’s a webcomic responsible for spawning a minor internet meme, and for good reason: it contains quite possibly some of the most baffling and ludicrous scenes I’ve ever encountered in webcomics.


Continue reading The Webcomic Overlook #106: Raine Dog…

The iPad cometh

January 28, 2010 at 3:19 pm | In The Webcomic Overlook, webcomics | 3 Comments
Tags: , ,

A couple of interesting comic-related news stories coming out today:

Apparently, the big news is the iPad. I know this because last night, I couldn’t friggin’ stop talking about it and how this is Apple’s sneaky endgame — which started with the iPod — to steal market share away from Microsoft by focusing on computer items that are not traditionally lumped under the “computer” category. And now they’ve developed something that is kinda a laptop but kinda not. Folks: this is why Steve Jobs is an evil genius.

Brigid Alverson has done an incredible job of collecting several iPad-related articles over at Paperless Comics. I advise you to check them all out, especially NPR’s grand proclamation that the iPad is going to save comics.

In unrelated news, The Beat is going to soon be leaving the Publisher’s Weekly umbrella. Remember to update your links to this excellent comic book news resource.

Quick and dirty tips for not getting banned in China

January 28, 2010 at 10:47 am | In The Webcomic Overlook, webcomics | 1 Comment
Tags: , , , , ,

So you face a dilemma.

You’re a fine, up-and-coming webcomic creator and you want to get as many eyeballs as you can. You don’t totally approve of this firewall that China has up on ethical grounds, what with you being a devoted net neutrality advocate and all (whatever that means). But hey, you barely get 30 regular viewers, and even an infinitesimal fraction of China’s market of a billion potential readers would be considered a success.

Would it really hurt to get some additional viewers, even if they don’t totally get your language and/or Westernized humor?

And how about those Westerners working in China? Should you deny transfer students your awesome brand of sequential art whimsy?

Is selling your soul to Satan really as bad as everyone makes it out to be?

Think about it.

Fortunately, our agents at Webcomic Overlook (i.e., me and the Google search engine) have scoured the web looking for handy tips on how not to get banned in China… freely given, by the way, unlike some other sites. (Wink, wink.)

  1. Stay away from posting your webcomic on social networking sites.

    From The Guardian:

    Broadly speaking, most of the big social websites – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube – are all blocked. Many familiar sites, such as Wikipedia, remain but with entire sections or contentious pages disappeared by The Great Firewall. Porn is pretty much outlawed.

    Here’s a partial list of more banned sites. I have no idea if popular webcomic-related sites like LiveJournal, Blogspot, and WordPress are included. I assume those are on a case-by-case basis.

    As for that last bannable offense, that probably means Oglaf, Sexy Losers, and Menage a 3 are outlawed. On the plus side, it’s very likely that Jack is also outlawed.

    Those lucky SOB’s.

    2. This image... probably bannable in China.

  2. Be aware of certain words that will likely get you banned.

    ConceptDoppler.org has a pretty nice list of bannable terms here. So, if you made up your webcomic name using a random name generator, and it spit out something ridiculous like “Oriental Red Space Time,” be wary: you WILL be banned in China.

    Or if you deign to make in a cerebral reference to Greek mythological hero Polynices, you WILL be banned in China. (Holy crap, I’m turning into the political version of Jeff Foxworthy.)

    Interestingly, “Chinese Democracy” isn’t specifically called out, so feel free to make as many Guns N’ Roses jokes as you want! (Also not banned: “The Spaghetti Incident?” Though it totally should.)

    All these bannable terms, by the way, do make for an attractive work of art.

  3. You probably shouldn’t be posting pictures of Tang Wei.

    The Chinese actress apparently has been blacklisted from getting an acting job in China. (Though I think she’s still OK in Hong Kong, China’s Sin City.) It’s probably robably because, in Ang Lee’s Lust, Caution, she strips to her birthday suit and engages in some steamy rated NC-17 sex scenes.

    Sooooo…. posting pictures of her is probably a big no no. Not that you should ever be posting pictures of attractive ladies on your website to get some cheap hits.

    No-sir-ee.

  4. If you’re writing a furry webcomic, never, under any circumstances, create a silly, bombastic dictator named “Chairman Meow.”

    I mean… obviously.

    5. Like this.

As I mentioned earlier, it’s already too late for me. The Webcomic Overlook is banned, banned, banned, and now I only have the wonderful Canadians (who astonishingly make up a whopping 63% of readers) to keep me going.

But I see this as a good thing.

Envision this scenario, if you will. Three years from now, China will probably develop a rather transparent Penny Arcade knock-off. (Just like every other webcomic creator in the Western world has done.) We’ll be laughing at first, like we laughed about the Chinese iPhone. But then Chinese engineers will reverse engineer the elements that make webcomics successful and will suddenly corner the webcomic market with a superior yet easy to manufacture product. And this will end up killing Western webcomics as we know it. Soon, we will just unquestioningly assume that the highest quality webcomics all come from China … until the put out a webcomic that has faulty accelerator pedals or something, and that won’t happen until 30 years down the line.

Meanwhile, they won’t have a superior webcomic review product because they have no baseline to work from. “What is this Webcomic Overlook?” they will ask, totally unfamiliar. They WOULD have known, if they could access it.

Thus The Webcomic Overlook will thrive in the post-Chinese-dominated world. Oh, sure, I’m going to have to make some token recognition about the glories of the Cultural Revolution — but who doesn’t these days, eh?

And then I shall laugh. Triumphantly. For the glory of Chairman Meow.

Er, Mao.

Next Page »

Blog at WordPress.com. | Theme: Pool by Borja Fernandez.
Entries and comments feeds.